Why Google's New Yorkers Move On

Google is doing all it can to staunch its brain drain, but according to ex-Google New York staffers we talked to, it's a battle they're going to lose. Their reasons:

On the engineering side: It's too bureaucratic nowadays. In 2004, Google had 5,000 employees. Now it has 25,000 employees. To get anything done you have to go through layers of management that didn't used to exist.

You can't make a startup inside Google, they try to make it feel like you can, but at the end of the day, it's not the same.

On the sales side: Since Tim left, they've radically reorganized the sales group, pushing out the old guard and installing a new team. While Tim used to be here in New York, the new boss is out in Mountain View, which is a bit alienating.

These aren't the worst reasons to lose staff, especially since attrition is inevitable when a company grows are large as Google. It is still a great place to work, says one former employee.

It's not all bad either. As one ex-employee says, Google's loss is New York's gain. One local startup co-founder tells us his inbox is full of Google resumes.

Before Google put an office in New York, it was hard to recruit engineers to New York. Now, it's not. And as some of Google's employees trickle away from the company, many will stay in the city, paving the way for a wave of hot new tech companies on the east coast.